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Category Archives: Deadspin

Disappearing Act

The National Football League, the entity offering entertainment in the form of rock-hard, speedy men ramming into each other with the force of small cars, thereby causing snapped knees, scrambled brains, and shattered neck vertebrae, now is shouting to the world that it disapproves of its employees beating up their loved ones.

How nice.

The NFL in the nine-plus decades it existed prior to last summer never even acknowledged such a problem existed. And you can be sure if its owners, coaches, and players ever did discuss domestic and intimate partner violence, it was with a wink and a laugh ‘cos, y’know, the broads probably deserved it — and, hey, some of ’em like it and want it!

No more. The NFL has spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars for ad and marketing people to come up with a snazzy logo and catch phrase indicating that previously tittered-about pastimes like clocking your fiancé into unconsciousness in an elevator and then dragging her limp body to your hotel room as if she were an overstuffed laundry sack were. well, frowned upon now.

Yeah. You’ll be seeing this all over the place soon:

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Phew. Well, that problem’s been solved. Now it’s on to the Middle East.

See, all the NFL is going to do is plaster this little meme all over its licensed properties and advertisements. You think Roger Goodell et all want their highly-compensated chattel to tone down their violence quotient? If so, you don’t get American football.

[T]ake a moment to think about the logic of what No More is doing. You know why they are doing this? Because it works. Because it makes money. Because we love pretending to care, especially when a brand makes it easier for us to do by removing all the pain, horror, darkness, and self-reflection and turning concern for others into products—preferably ones that can be worn. Do those teenage boys wearing “I Heart Boobies” really care about breast cancer? Probably not, but at least they’re thinking about it, right? And even if they don’t think about it, they generated money (a nickel on the dollar, maybe, but better than nothing) for a good cause!

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Triumph Of The Shill

Sticking with the NFL, I’d been seeing references to this Left Shark folderol for nearly a week now. I resisted all temptations to look into it, knowing full well it was a viral thing generated by people far too enamored with mass-audience cultural references — precisely the kind of crap I strive to shy away from.

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But, of course, the Left Shark became too big a cookie to ignore so I had to gulp it down yesterday evening. My initial gut reaction was on the mark, natch. Apparently some dancer in a shark costume, backing up the spectacularly gorgeous and equally spectacularly pedestrian entertainer Katy Perry who displayed all her uninspired caterwauling and dancing skills, her A-to-B vocal range, and her meal-ticket legs and rack at the Super Bowl’s halftime show Sunday. The shark guy seemed to not know precisely what his steps were supposed to be so more people now have opinions about his choreographic capabilities than about, oh, say, Citizens United.

What struck me, though, was not the Left Shark’s steps but the entire goddamned spectacle itself. Katy Perry arrived on stage atop a titanic robot lion, surrounded by hundreds of extras, with fireworks exploding all around the stadium, and the crowd roaring as if twelve game-winning touchdowns had been scored simultaneously. It was excess beyond any I’d imagined before.

A filmmaker from the 1970s — Robert Altman, for instance — would be hard pressed to create any remotely similar scene for some futuristic dystopian movie meant to petrify us to death. The 2015 halftime show made the proletariate marching-to-work scene from Metropolis, the helicopter-and-the-dancing-girls scene from Apocalypse Now, and all of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will look like bedtime tales.

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It was about eighty thousand visually-drugged and mentally-numbed people thinking and feeling as one. That, babies, scares the holy shit out of me.

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Home Is Where The Monster Is

A lot of people shout to the world that they love, love, love critters. Mostly, though, they love only those furry, fuzzy guys that look oh-so-cute in trillions of social media pix.

It takes a real animal lover to want to be anywhere within a mile and a half of this guy:

Eek!

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Sheryl Mitchell really does love critters — even the guy pictured above. She and her partner, Darin Bagley, run Scaly Tailz, a “reptile and amphibian education and rescue group,” as they describe it.

The Scaly Tailz HQ happens to be Mitchell’s apartment. That means there are a few cold-blooded animals running around the place. Better her home than mine, of course, but still, kudos to her and Darin for truly loving these beings.

Sadly, Mitchell’s building has been taken over by a new property manager and the fresh landlord won’t have anything to do with iguanas and jesus lizards running around their real estate. Scaly Tailz, ergo, is being thrown out. ST now needs a home. To that end, Mitchell and Bagley have created a crowdrise site asking for leads and help.

You don’t have to bring a passel of geckos into your bedroom but if you know somebody who has a heated garage, shed, or studio space they’d like to donate, Mitchell sez she’ll maintain it, keep it clean, and run her rescue and educ. assoc. from it.